NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review: Ultra Expensive, Ultra Rare, Ultra Fast
by Ryan Smith on May 3, 2012 9:00 AM ESTMetro 2033
Paired with Crysis as our second behemoth FPS is Metro: 2033. Metro gives up Crysis’ lush tropics and frozen wastelands for an underground experience, but even underground it can be quite brutal on GPUs, which is why it’s also our new benchmark of choice for looking at power/temperature/noise during a game. If its sequel due this year is anywhere near as GPU intensive then a single GPU may not be enough to run the game with every quality feature turned up.
Metro was another game that the GTX 680 had trouble with, leading to it trailing the 7970 by the slightest bit. With multiple GPUs thrown into the mix that slight gap has significantly widened, leading to the GTX 690 once again trailing the 7970CF, particularly at 2560 and 5760. In this case the GTX 690 is only hitting 82% of the 7970CF’s performance at 5760, and 84% at 2560. It’s only at 1920 (and 100fps) that the GTX 690 can catch up. So much like the GTX 680, NVIDIA’s not necessarily off to a great start here compared to AMD.
Meanwhile GTX 690 performance relative to the GTX 680 SLI once again looks good here, although not quite as great as with Crysis. At 5760 the GTX 690 achieves 96% of the performance, and at 2560 97% of the performance. So far the GTX 690 is more or less living up to NVIDIA’s claims of being two 680s on a single card.
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Death666Angel - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
The few reviews I've seen have 4GB GTX 680 card between 5% and 10% faster at high resolutions (starting at 2560x1440 to 7860x1600). Adding, on top of that some more memory bandwidth would have been the gaming card most people expected from nVidia.As it stands, the GTX 680 is good, but also very expensive (I can have t he 7970 for 65€ less). The GTX 690 is a good product for people who want SLI but don't have the space, PSU, SLI enabled mainboard or want 4 GPUs.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, May 5, 2012 - link
Sure, link us to a single review that shows us that. Won't be HardOcp nor any as popular, as every review has shown the exact opposite.kallogan - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Where are the middle range gpus ?Wait. Nvidia don't release them cause they can't provide enough quantities.
CeriseCogburn - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
They're being held back like the "real 680" top nVidia core, because nVidia is making more money selling the prior launches and the new 2nd tier now top dog cards.It's a conspiracy of profit and win.
silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Yes, because making a small number of full size Kepler cores is obviously going to make them more money than a large number of less complex Kepler cores. *rolleyes*NVIDIA, assuming they had the ability to get them manufactured in large enough quantities, would make far more profit off a 660 or 670 than they ever would off a 680.
silverblue - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
(I mean making far more profit off the 660/670 series than the 680 series, not specific cards nor the profit per card)CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - link
A lot of prior gen stock moving, take a look you're on the internet, not that hard to do, wonder why you people are always so clueless.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - link
For instance the entire lot of 7870's and 7850's on the egg are outsold by a single GTX680 by EVGA - confirmed purchasers reviews.So it appears nVidia knows what it's doing in a greatly superior manner than your tiny mind spewing whatever comes to it in a few moments of raging rebuttal whilst you try to "point out what's obvious" - yet is incorrect.
zcat - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Ditto.Every time my Anandtech feed updates, the first thing I'm hoping to see is reviews for the more-reasonably priced, and less power-hoggy GTX 640 (w/GDDR5) and GTX 660 Ti. If we see a review, then at least we know it'll show up at retail very soon after.
All I want for xmas is a mid-range NVidia card with a higher idle wattage to maximum performance ration than AMD (because NVidia > AMD wrt drivers, esp under linux).
zcat - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
correction: idle Watts <= 10 && max performance >= AMD.